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Why didn’t I lock her in a closet and go on with the search as soon as it was light?
    No. That would be too dangerous. Discovery was almost certain. The maid would come back. She might have visitors. I’d be caught. I discarded the idea, but I did not leave.
    There was no danger. Not from her. She was too plastered to notice anything, or to do anything about it if she did see me. If I walked in and started talking to her, she’d probably just think I was another form of the jim jams. I could see the half-empty bottle, and the glass that had fallen over on its side. She wasn’t a noisy drunk, or a sloppy one. It was just the opposite. The thing that tipped you off was the exaggerated dignity, and the slow, deliberate way she moved, as if she were made of eggshells.
    The record ran out to the end and ground to a stop as the machine shut itself off. It was deadly silent with the music gone. She made no attempt to put on another record. She was still swaying a little, and I could see her lips moving as if she were singing to herself or praying, but no sound came out. Then, very slowly, she turned the upper part of her body a little and collapsed against the low divan beside her. Her face was pressed into the covering, the dark hair aswirl, and one arm stretched out across it.
    I started to turn away. It was time to get out of there. Then I stopped suddenly and swung my head around, listening. What I’d heard wasn’t repeated. It didn’t have to be; I knew what it was. It was that step, the same one that had creaked under me. Somebody was coming up the stairs.
    There was another room opening off the hall, but the door was closed. He’d hear me open it. I didn’t have all night to make up my mind. I slid inside, leaned over Mrs. Butler, and blew out the candle. I’d already seen the closet door partly open beyond her.
    When the blackness closed in I kept the picture of the room in my mind long enough to turn ninety degrees to the right, slip past the end of the divan, and grope for the door of the closet. I touched it, eased it open, and stepped inside. Clothes brushed against my back. They smelled faintly of perfume in the hot, dead air.
    There was no sound. But the hallway was carpeted. Whoever it was could be anywhere out there. I waited, keeping an eye to the crack in the door. A beam of light appeared in the doorway of the room and swung around the walls. It hit a mirror and splashed, then swept on. It dipped, catching the pile of phonograph records and the whisky bottle, and came to rest at last on the sprawled figure of the girl. It remained fixed, like a big eye, while whoever was holding the flashlight walked on into the room. It was so still I tried to quiet the sound of my breathing.
    He was squatting down now, and seemed to be changing hands with the light. Then I saw why. Just for a second the gun passed through the beam, steadying up against her temple. The cold-blooded brutality of it made me come out of the closet without even stopping to think.
    I was driving, the way they teach you to get up a head of steam in the first three strides. But I forgot the end of the divan. My legs hit it, and I went the rest of the way in by air. He was under me and trying to turn when I sifted down on him, and from then on it was confused, and rough. When nothing crunched, I knew he was no flyweight himself, and as we rolled across and demolished the record player I could feel the tremendous surge of power in the arm about my neck. The light had gone out when it hit the floor, so we were in absolute darkness, and I didn’t know what had become of the gun.
    The arm was pulling my head off. I broke it up by getting a knee into his belly and starting to move it down to where he didn’t like it. He scuttled away from it and landed a big fist on the side of my face. It rocked me. I could feel it going all the way down to my toes and back up again like a shock wave. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and swung blindly in the